Lawrence Ferlinghetti at The American Scholar:
To tell the truth, to tell the truth! Well-—this is the most depressing journey I have ever been on—Imagine having to spend one’s life condemned to passing from one motel to another, one hotel room to another, all of them alike, first class, the same spotless sheets, the same glasses in sanitary wax paper, the same little soap bars individually wrapped, Gideon Bible in the drawer, no one to speak with but hotel clerks, wives running motels in forlorn corners, bus drivers. Loneliness of millions living like this, between cocktails, between filling stations, between buses, trains, towns, restaurants, movies, highways leading over horizons to another Rest Stop. Sad the bundles in bus station waiting rooms, sad the frizzled women sitting next to them, the old couples on benches talking in old languages, the Mexicans with satchels they repack in men’s rooms. Sad hope of all their journeys to Nowhere and back in dark Eternity. … In the middle of the Journey of My Life, I came to myself in a dark wood.
more here.